Dangerous Dysfunction in the House

First, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blunders the House into an international crisis by threatening to schedule a non-binding Sense of the House resolution regarding a massacre that occurred a century ago in place far, far away.

Don’t forget she did that for purely partisan politics, against the advice of her major foreign policy advisers, including Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), Dick Gephardt and almost every Democratic foreign policy professional of the last 40 years.

Then, she has to pull the so-called RESTORE Act, so named to show the left’s commitment to civil liberties, when it was alertly discovered by Republicans that the bill would require that the National Security Agency (NSA) check with a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to listen in on a conversation between Osama Bin Laden and who knows who in the U.S.

Then Pelosi discovered that she would lose a vote in the House if Republicans were allowed to amend the bill to allow the NSA to actually do its job and listen in on conversations between terrorists.

I guess there are enough sensible Democrats in the House who actually believe that terrorists sacrifice their civil liberty protections by becoming terrorists. It is not clear that the left wing that dominates the House Democratic Caucus actually understand that concept.

Civil liberties are important principles. But they should only be extended to those who accept the responsibilities of living in civilized society. Those who support those who fly planes into towers with the express purpose of killing innocent civilians, those who attempt to acquire nuclear, biological or other weapons of mass destruction with the express purpose of killing innocent Americans, those who convince people to strap on bombs and kill themselves and innocent bystanders, they don’t get the benefit of the doubt. They need to be stopped before they get the chance to kill you or me or our families or our colleagues or our fellow citizens.

And one of the ways we stop them is by listening in on their kooky conversations.

You have to wonder about the judgment of a political leader who first creates an international crisis by purposefully scheduling a vote on a non-binding resolution that will inflame an important ally all for domestic partisan political reasons, and then schedules a bill that will make it harder for our guys to listen in on the conversations of known terrorists who want to kill us.